[Vision2020] President Obama's Socialist Mind-Control "Back to School" Speech Released

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of the White House website at:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/

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Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with
students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got
students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth
grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for
those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your
first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little
nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty
good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade
you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you
could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a
few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the
American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons
herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.
Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d
fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain,
my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no
picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m
here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m
here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s
expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot
about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and
pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on
track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in
front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high
standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools
that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they
deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the
most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of
it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you
show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your
parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes
to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you
has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have
to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of
you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to
discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book
or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a
paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an
inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new
medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for
your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme
Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student
government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll
need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a
police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a
member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every
single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop
into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for
it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What
you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of
this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether
we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science
and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy
technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and
critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight
poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation
more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you
develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new
jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and
intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t
do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself,
you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you
have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on
your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two
years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to
pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had.
There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were
times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m
not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life
could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity
to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First
Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone
to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she
worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults
in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your
family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around.
Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have
friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look
like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going
on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad
attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting
class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No
one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own
destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak
English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went
to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked
hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is
now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr.
Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s
fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of
treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him
much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never
fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois.
Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest
neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a
program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate
high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They
faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give
up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals
for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for
your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can
be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in
class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to
get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your
community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased
or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe,
like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn.
Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more
ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a
lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep
people from getting the flu this fall and winter.
Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to
really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and
successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through
rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re
not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject
you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework
assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute.
And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
That’s OK.  Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones
who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was
rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was
cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games
and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have
failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I
succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your
failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them
show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that
doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to
behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just
means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard
work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport.
You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to
practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math
problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times
before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good
enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you
need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness,
it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you
don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you
trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask
them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.
And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you
feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on
yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your
country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough.
It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their
country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went
on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you
sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought
for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit
20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way
we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What
problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will
a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say
about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make
sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m
working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment
and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I
expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort
into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t
let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make
us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

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" . . . write your own destiny . . . make your own future . . . become
good at things through hard work . . . you can't let your failures define
you . . ."

It's all socialist mind-control.  What's next?  Affordable health care?

Seeya round town, comrades.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
and the Realist adjusts his sails."

- Unknown